Zohran Mamdani has mastered the artwork of efficiency politics. However behind the social media gloss lies a troubling silence, in response to Marianne Pizzitola, president of the NYC Group of Public Service Retirees.
REUTERS/Mike Segar
Zohran Mamdani has mastered the artwork of efficiency politics. He’s a TikTok man, fast with a slogan, filled with fiery rhetoric, and prepared with a viral soundbite. However behind the social media gloss lies a troubling silence.
On the subject of older New Yorkers, the individuals who constructed this metropolis and proceed to maintain it, Mamdani has nothing to say, or worse, he permits his supporters to say it for him.
Scroll via his on-line military on social media and also you’ll see the contempt on full show: “9/11 is over, boomer!” “You’re irrelevant!” “Go away, old lady!” These are the phrases hurled at retirees, the identical retirees who stored New York operating via disaster after disaster, who staffed the hospitals, school rooms, and firehouses, and who raised the generations now mocking them.
And what does Mamdani say in response to this cruelty? Nothing. Not a phrase of rebuke. His silence speaks volumes.
That silence is not only disrespectful; it’s coverage. Mamdani’s imaginative and prescient of New York seems to haven’t any place for the people who find themselves over 50, the very New Yorkers who want compassionate management probably the most.
When he talks in regards to the “average” New Yorker, he paints an image that someway excludes the aged, the disabled, and the retired civil servants residing on fastened incomes. His marketing campaign is crammed with lofty guarantees about equity and fairness, but these phrases ring hole when he received’t even acknowledge one of many metropolis’s fastest-growing populations and the biggest civil service retiree group within the state, the NYC Group of Public Service Retirees.
The reality is that older New Yorkers are struggling. Housing insecurity, rising healthcare prices, threats to Medicare, and the erosion of retiree advantages are each day realities. Public security issues maintain many from strolling exterior at evening. Seniors face loneliness, meals insecurity, and bureaucratic neglect.
An actual chief would see this and reply with empathy, not hashtags. However Mamdani has chosen a special path: to disregard us, or worse, to dismiss us. That’s as a result of his workforce contains the very individuals who tried to steal from us within the final 4 years.
This isn’t about age; it’s about respect and illustration. Each technology deserves to have its voice heard, however the older technology has earned that proper many occasions over. We now have paid taxes, raised households, and stored our guarantees to this metropolis. What we anticipate in return is management that values expertise and compassion.
As a substitute, Mamdani affords a politics of division, one which pits younger towards previous, as if solidarity has an expiration date. He’s in good firm. Adrienne Adams, outgoing Metropolis Council speaker and consultant of Council District 28 in southeast Queens, has accomplished the identical factor.
For our virtually 500,000 members, retirees, metropolis staff, academics, police, firefighters, nurses, and numerous others, there is no such thing as a cause to vote for him. None.
A mayor who won’t meet with retirees can’t be trusted to manipulate for all New Yorkers. A mayor who permits ageism to thrive in his personal ranks won’t rise up for the susceptible when it issues most.
And a mayor who sees older New Yorkers as obstacles to progress, somewhat than companions in constructing a greater metropolis, is unfit for workplace.
In contrast, Andrew Cuomo, no matter one’s views of his previous, has proven a elementary respect for public servants and for the retirees who devoted their lives to New York in conferences with us. He understands that progress and safety can coexist.
Cuomo has at all times been a hands-on chief, and when he speaks to older New Yorkers, he speaks with them, not about them. He has the expertise and the pragmatism to manipulate a fancy metropolis the place ideology alone received’t pay the hire or maintain the lights on.
Mamdani, however, seems extra fascinated by making historical past than in creating lasting change. He desires to be remembered because the mayor of a “new” New York, but when his present perspective is any indication, that “new” New York will probably be one the place the aged are invisible, their contributions forgotten, their wants dismissed.
If he actually cared about constructing a metropolis for everybody, he would begin by listening to those that have already lived via its best challenges.
New York deserves a mayor who understands that compassion isn’t a development, it’s an obligation. A mayor who sees each technology as a part of the identical neighborhood. A mayor who received’t go away retirees behind.
Zohran Mamdani could have TikTok on his facet, however we now have time and reality on ours. And we are going to use each to remind New York that management is about service, not spectacle. The way forward for this metropolis relies upon not on who can go viral, however on who can govern with imaginative and prescient, one that features each New Yorker, from the youngest to the oldest.
As a result of a mayor who can’t converse to us can by no means actually converse for us.
Marianne Pizzitola is president of the NYC Group of Public Service Retirees.
